We can’t leave it to the elite to decide who’s cultured

[JSngry]

Well, that might be the score in Georgia, but not in England. 950 years after the conquest, we're still two nations,

Jeez, that's waaaay too long (or, apparently, not) for things to evolve but not really change...Just hope it doesn't take that long for us here to get over the cumulative cultural legacy of human retardation brought about by plantation-rooted economic models (for both production and capitalization), etc.

You guys need, like, an Irish Queen or something. That would be fun to watch from over here. But not as much fun as watching Christine bake.

At some point, I have to think, the mathematics of population and demographics are going to reach some sort of critical mass and the restart button will get pushed. Whether or not it goes any differently after that, I'm not particularly hopeful...new players, but same games, probably. But still, franchise reboot, always cause for culture!

[erwbol]

MG wrote:

Bev, there's some educational research from the seventies that underlines this - looking into kids 'articulation'. The Saxons were thought by their teachers to be inarticulate, the Normans articulate. But the researchers, analysing the recordings of the kids, found there was no difference in the kids' ability to communicate whatever they were supposed to communicate; they just used different words. Our fault for having suck a perrverse history and more perverse language.

Don't they speak ancient Celt where you are? Suppressed elsewhere by the Anglo-Saxons!

The list is of course silly - I can't quite work out if the researchers came up with it or if it was made up from responses to their survey.

It's the main article I find interesting - the idea that your 'Normans', instead of using 'Culture' and 'Art' to exclude the masses are now welcoming the masses in as long as they admire it on their terms (i.e. keeping power in their hands). I'm not sure it's that recent a phenomena - after all the original Reithian briefing of the BBC included 'educating' and the Third Programme (now Radio 3) made quite clear what people needed educating about (lots of string quartets but let's keep that jazz stuff to a minimum).  

You can see something parallel going on in the machinations of our political leaders at present. Out go the traditional or sociological class demarcations of old. We now have two classes - The Hard Working Family; and the Scroungers and their Apologists. By encouraging the middle 60% to believe that they are part of the first group and need to despise the second, attention is deflected from themselves hanging onto their privileges and extending them.

So by encouraging all those Hard Working Families to embrace 'our' culture there's no danger of it ever being taken away. 

There was a good recent example of rallying everybody to 'our' culture in defence of 'God Save The Queen'. 

 

Hence our modern Dutch 'Participation Society' which recently replaced the old Welfare State for this very reason. If you cannot participate you should do the decent thing, fuck off and die, or at least hang your head in shame and apologise, apologise, etc., according to the Hard Working ethics.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Shaw, of course, covered the issue in Pygmalion. And it's true, if you've got a good ear for accents, you can identify fairly closely where people come from. Lloyd Wilson, an organist who lives in Chicago, comes from Brighton and fingered me as being from there, even though I'd left twenty years before (as an adult). But he'd left when he was a teenager and spoke with a Chicago accent, so I didn't get him, and was amazed until he told me he'd been to the same school as a couple of my mates. Mobility is breaking down that accent stuff, but not the language thing. But it is possible to develop more or less instinctive 'correct' language for particular circumstances. As an influential Civil Servant, I spoke (had to speak, or I wouldn't have been influential) a different language to what I speak now. But I can't now remember how I spoke before I started moving up the slippery pole, so I don't know what my 'normal' or 'real' language is any more.

(At least I never learned any Welsh, apart from how to pronounce it.)

MG

 

[Jim R]

Food, water, shelter, sleep, and Antiques Roadshow (both versions, and thank you Hugh Scully), and I'm good.  Oh- and American Pickers.

I think I scored somewhere between 3 and 5.  I still don't see anything about Monty Python in there.  Wtf?

[JSngry]

Love the content on Pickers, not so much the Pickers themselves. Actually kinda prefer Pawn Stars because of that, in spite of the hoary story lines, nobody on there seems to be any nicer than they really are, and there's no illusions about how buying and reselling works. And - half-hour goes by quicker than hour, don't blame me for that.

Nevertheless, I'll gladly watch both (and ALL that Roadshows), sometimes even in reruns, because, you know, stuff. They're both about stuff, and we all like stuff, right?

[catesta]

I've pretty much given up on Pawn Stars. Maybe it's the kid's new bright white chompers or it's just the history lessons started to bore me.

 

[JSngry]

But they're supposed to be boring. They NEED to be boring! Being able to not just tolerate boredom, but to get something constructive out of it, hey, if that's not the mark of a truly cultured individual, I don't know what is! Otherwise, you got a bunch of compulsive instant-gratification tit-leeches prowling around thinking that if they can't get a buzz out of it, it really doesn't matter, and lord, how many more of THOSE do we need?

[catesta]

Point taken.

 

[JSngry]

More importantly, which kid got new (or at least clean) teeth? Corey or Chumlee?

No longer a regular watcher, obviously...more of a binger now.

[Larry Kart]

Well, that might be the score in Georgia, but not in England. 950 years after the conquest, we're still two nations,

J

You guys need, like, an Irish Queen or something.

Hey -- they had Oscar Wilde.

[JSngry]

Wasted Opportunity!

[catesta]

I've not watched the show for a while but I remember tuning in one day to see that Corey and even Chumlee had lost a substantial amount of weight and I noticed Corey has super white teeth that appear to be slightly on the large side. Veneers or implants at the very least. Maybe Chumlee does too.

[JSngry]

Until they do an episode abut The Old Man needing diapers or some such, I'll still have a look in. Big Hoss as partner though...ooooh...Rick can be hard, but never a real asshole. His kid needs to work on that more than he does his teeth.

About Christine Wallace - she's now trying to do some good with her time in the spotlight: http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/yourtown/didcot/11558820.Bake_Off_contestant_rises_to_occasion_with_charity_book/

And not once did I hear her call anybody a "clever sausage".

 

 

 

[Simon Weil]

My line always is: I don't want to be part of anyone's damn elite.

[JSngry]

 

[A Lark Ascending]

Add to 'being cultured' list:

• Not being impressed by Oscar Peterson

In fact one of the defining signs of 'being cultured' is being unimpressed by a lot of things. 

Edited September 22, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[ejp626]

Add to 'being cultured' list:

• Not being impressed by Oscar Peterson

In fact one of the defining signs of 'being cultured' is being unimpressed by a lot of things. 

Yes, being unimpressed is important, but it is just as important that one have a refined, even genteel, enjoyment of the worthy things in life.  One cannot be a fan boy and still be considered cultivated.

[A Lark Ascending]

I assume you are being ironic.

[JSngry]

I assure you that the "impression" I get from Oscar Peterson is not at all "cultured", it's quite visceral and violent, actually. A type of anger/rage/whatever is stirred in me that no cultured person would dare admit to, much less display.

Saying this with a guaranteed 100% absence of irony too.

Of course, perhaps a mark of culture is not allowing that people can have a visceral negative reaction to music the same way they can have a visceral positive one, but sorry, having one and not allowing for having the other is not cultured, it's an emotional imbalance.

[Jim R]

Food, water, shelter, sleep, and Antiques Roadshow (both versions, and thank you Hugh Scully), and I'm good.  Oh- and American Pickers.

I think I scored somewhere between 3 and 5.  I still don't see anything about Monty Python in there.  Wtf?

Little did I know that Mr. Scully would pass away a few days after I posted that (he passed on Thursday, apparently).  RIP.

[sidewinder]

26 here. No bow ties or bl**dy 'Question Time' either ! 

[A Lark Ascending]

26 here. No bow ties or bl**dy 'Question Time' either ! 

That high has you definitely labelled as Waitrose Man. My 16 gets me Sainsbury's Man. Not sure how low you have to go for Aldi Man. 

[johnblitweiler]

I prefer cultured buttermilk.